


blood-spotted butterfly

by Mistropolis



Category: Cytus (Video Game), Cytus II (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Don’t copy to another site, F/F, Gen, Introspection, PLEASE don't read if you haven't cleared Ivy yet, Spoilers, for cytus ii 2.0, of some sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 18:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17586440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistropolis/pseuds/Mistropolis
Summary: [ MAJOR CYTUS II V2.0 SPOILERS ]Ivy made a butterfly amulet for someone.





	blood-spotted butterfly

At first, Ivy doesn’t let the butterflies bother her.

Where she is now, a cave and endless stretches of grassland and forests, it’s only normal to run into as many kinds of animals as possible. Deers, birds, bugs… They are normal occurrences that don’t really interfere with her. As long as none of them prevents her from performing her manual works— recovering her files related to her past painted in bloodshed and war, managing her aging power source to make it more energy-efficient— she doesn’t mind the animals passing by, even if they literally crawl into the cave and sleep beside her.

But the butterflies, those butterflies with their wings full of colors, abstract poetries in motion, they don’t vanish or leave.

Sometimes, Ivy would return to her cave with a small portion of hunt only to find her cave completely occupied by crowds of butterflies, quietly and slowly flapping their colorful wings and generally leaving her with no peace. It’s not like the butterflies could make loud noises or anything, and yet Ivy would feel self-conscious for eating right in front of them. Sometimes they don’t come in crowds, but they would still fly in and out, in and out, and every wingbeat reverberates like mental paroxysms in Ivy’s eardrums.

But then again, it’s not like these butterflies are in her living space every second. It’s no big deal, really, so Ivy doesn’t pay too much mind to them.

Until the day she finds a brown one.

Ivy’s no biologist, but she knows from experience that brown butterflies aren’t that unusual. In fact, half of the time the most common type of butterflies to be found are brown ones or russet ones that border between red and brown shades. More often than not, it’s the dominantly blue and white ones that are rarer.

But Ivy notices it. The brown one with a bleeding wing.

The first time she saw it, Ivy suspects that she needs a cleaning session on her optical sensors. Butterflies can’t bleed, that’s absurd; at least, they don’t have red blood as far as she’s concerned.

But then she saw it. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Third time’s the charm. The third time is when she saw it up close. It has chipped its right wing so that it looks like a broken infinity symbol. Blood-like spots dapple across its wings as if there is literally blood leaking from that chipped injury.

Ivy had tried helping it. It’s foolish, to think that she could deal with something as delicate as a butterfly, but at least she has tried in some ways, had tried to find materials to as a substitute for the broken part, has tried to find something to tether its body firmer so it won’t fail.

None of that ever works out. The butterfly merely flaps its wings weakly in response. Gradually, it stops flying anymore.

That time’s a harsh winter, and none of the butterfly’s companions could be seen anywhere in the unforgiving temperature. Only the butterfly remains, and slowly, it dies, life bleeding out of it completely at long last.

Just to be selfish once more, Ivy takes the butterfly and puts it into her pocket.

 

⚝

 

_“What is this?”_

_Ivy smiles, moving her fingers to the edge of the butterfly’s wings, pointing at the white spots across the heart-shaped map of red. “It’s the specimen, of a butterfly. A butterfly is, like, a type of insect that has once existed in the world, and they look like this.”_

_Vanessa gently runs her fingers across the butterfly’s wings, feeling along the soft fabrics. “It’s beautiful. Are there more like this?”_

_Ivy tries not to let the sensation of Vanessa brushing her fingers against hers blockade all thoughts from running through her mind. “Oh— oh, I haven’t looked too deep into the museum, but I’m sure I can find more!”_

_Vanessa’s adoring smile melts into a small lopsided frown in an instant. “Huh? That’s great, but wouldn’t it bother you to do so… ?”_

_“Not at all! I will do anything that makes you happy!”_

 

⚝

 

“Vanessa, if you do intend to let me find you again in this new world, then is this butterfly a sign?”

Ivy balls her fists. She knows it’s foolish to assume at all that somehow Vanessa, wherever she is and whatever state she is in, could somehow be capable of sending a singular, injured butterfly accurately into Ivy’s hideout, and precisely around the time she will see it.

Nevertheless, Ivy keeps the butterfly close to her. In her mind, somewhere amidst the zeroes and ones, she’d convinced herself the butterfly will carry Vanessa back to her.

 

⚝

 

She has hesitated on going back. After all, any other inquiry she has for that funny encyclopedia thing at this point would be a deviation from her current works. Right now she needs to focus on getting into that ‘Library’ of A.R.C., and any other thing isn’t an immediate priority.

And yet…

Ivy inserts another coin into the Basicpedia machine.

“Greetings, Learner Ivy! What questions do you have today?”

Ivy feels her throat constricting, not too unlike that of a human when words are hard to form and release into the world. It’s been too long since she has to pronounce those crispy syllables and her vocalizer needs getting-used-to all over again. “Tell, tell me about the name ‘Vanessa’.”

“Yes! We have a linguistic enthusiast today, isn’t it?” The screen on Basicpedia flashes to a book. “In Old World 1726, the name Vanessa made its debut in a poem titled ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’, wherein ‘Vanessa’ refers to the name of the author Jonathan Swift’s lover, Esther Vanhomrigh. It is a neologism composed of blending the first three letters, ‘Van’, with ‘Essa’, a more affectionate nickname of Esther.”

Ivy feels a deep ridge enrooting in the middle of her brows, accompanied by a headache. Of course, she should’ve saved that coin for something else, maybe another one of those useless ice cream. It might not give her sufficient sustenance, but at least it tastes good enough to distract her from any misery for a short period of time. Listening to useless rants like this, on the other hand…

Just as Ivy was about to leave in mourning of her lost coin, the Basicpedia’s screen flashes to a butterfly instead.

“Since then, not only has the name Vanessa been adopted as a popular name, it was also adopted as the name of a genus of butterfly, by Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius in Old World 1807. The butterfly hasn’t been documented much in our current time, but there are some sightings of it according to A.R.C.”

Ivy feels her lips and heart part ways, as all words desert in fear of misrepresenting what she could possibly be feeling. Without her own knowledge, she has reached a hand back into the pocket that holds the butterfly.

She dares not to actually take out it out in fear of crumbling it into dust, but she stretches her pocket just enough to let in enough light and peek at the butterfly’s wings. They are of a brilliant shade of orange, tinted with red dots here and there. It looks rather identical to the butterfly on the Basicpedia screen.

Ivy slowly lets the pocket retreat back to its original shape, not letting herself even hear what the encyclopedia machine is going to say more before leaving.

 

⚝

 

She didn’t imagine it. Even if Vanessa herself hasn’t sent it, this is a sign that Ivy is meant to find her. It couldn’t be anything else. Vanessa is calling for her in this wilderness of humans and she will do it, will pave a path to where Vanessa is, will even crawl there if she has to.

Ivy returns to her current hideout in the Node, an abandoned factory, bidding her time and fingers already inching to hack away zeroes and ones to reach for Vanessa’s.

 

⚝

 

_“You know,” Ivy speeds up to chase up with Vanessa, previously choosing to walk slower deliberately in an attempt to calm herself. I did end up going back to that museum and see if there are more butterfly specimen to find.”_

_Vanessa’s small smile splits into a full-teethed panic. “Huh? Why would you do that?”_

_Ivy smiles, a smile no doubt which would appear ‘goofy’ according to older time archives of human movies. “I mean, it is for_ you, _so I don’t really care for how it might be tiring or dangerous, so I—”_

_“I don’t mean that, Ivy.” Vanessa stops in her tracks, causing Ivy to nearly bump into her back and toppling the chest of specimen she has hidden close to her back. Ivy doesn’t have any chance to check for sure if the specimen is okay when Vanessa turns back and glares at her._

_Glares at her. Who is this?_

_“Van— Vanessa? What’s wrong?”_

_“Ivy. You have to stop doing this.” Vanessa’s glare still scalds, but her voice turns more concerned. “You have to put all these things back to where they belong, where the humans should find them instead.”_

_“But, but why?”_

_“You understand that, Ivy. We built all these housing and museums and whatnot for the sake of those frozen humans in the tubes. We don’t have a choice to reject the humans what they rightfully deserve when they finally wake up from their frozen slumber. You have to understand that.”_

_Ivy could nearly feel the wooden case slip from her fingers. “That’s… You aren’t…”_

_“Do you intend to say I’m not wrong? Well, if you do understand that,” Vanessa walks gradually farther away from Ivy at a brisk pace. “I’d suggest you go back to Cytus and sync back up with your fellow—”_

_“This isn’t you.”_

_Vanessa stops. Turns around. “I beg your pardon?”_

_“This isn’t you! This couldn’t possibly be you! You would never say all this to me. Didn’t we mean anything to each other?”_

_Vanessa’s face darkens. “Emotion… You are putting my operational core to undue stress—”_

_Ivy grabs Vanessa by the shoulders, letting the wooden chest freely topple to the ground._

_“I’m not! I’m just trying to wake you back up, Vanessa. Can you even hear me, Vanessa—”_

 

⚝

 

Ivy falls down to the ground, her metal clanking loudly as it made an impact with the ground. So much for the layer of human-imitating skin around it.

She checks the screens around her. It’s two thirty-five a.m., and the last time frame she remembers was around half past twelve, trying to use the algorithm she just wrote to convert emotions into music.

Everything she just experienced between these two points of time, it feels so real… yet she knows for sure it isn’t true. None of those has happened, and yet that Vanessa has been true, been realistic enough to fool herself so completely.

From what she remembers on human behaviors, that should be a phenomenon known as dreaming. Precisely, what she has just dreamt could also be categorized as a nightmare. She knows none of the details of that nightmare could ever come true: Vanessa could have never yelled at her, Vanessa would’ve never told Ivy to just obey the humans even if she hadn’t shown signs she could defy Cytus yet. Despite all that, Vanessa has always looked at everything Ivy does with adoration, so why… ?

Imagination. Her own fears. The voices booming uselessly in her own memories, disembodied voices forming the melancholic, bloody melody of Ivy’s nightmarish memories of everything that has transpired.

Not, that’s not true. Her own memories of all that has happened to her still shouldn’t have composed that nightmare, so…

Ivy reaches for the butterfly again. She could’ve dreamt that up, but she couldn’t deny herself the possibility of Vanessa turning into that glaring, human-obeying nightmare-Vanessa. After all, throughout all of her encounters with all other different A.I.’s so far in Node 08, not a single one of them exhibit any affinity with the OPCI Operators or even seem to obey the original Hyperion Protocol anymore. If humans can rewrite the entire protocol and remade all the robots that had been Ivy’s people, then what could they possibly do to Vanessa…?

Ivy feels something crunch in her pocket.

 

⚝

 

The butterfly’s wings are doomed to crumble into dust completely, so Ivy purchased some strings to connect each broken piece of it together, and wears it around her left waist. Humans call this a kind of amulet, right?

Everything shall be ready now. She tries to run Æsir several more times, ensuring this virtual avatar can carry out the proper job of collecting every listener’s emotions when the time comes. Once this is all done, the new Cytus core will be ready to wake Vanessa up.

Ivy feels for the amulet again, feeling along the crispy, crumbling texture of the wings dappled with blood.

When Vanessa is rightfully freed, Ivy will tie this bracelet around Vanessa’s wrist herself, passing along whatever magical properties the amulet does possess.

_Wait for me, Vanessa._

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i just HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABT IVY AND VANESSA OKAY  
> idk if this fic even comes remotely close to adequately screaming out all my feelings regarding them i hope so lmao  
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!!!!


End file.
